Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

observes that the quest for objectivity starts with the subject, but as consciousness itself becomes increasingly seen as an object, this undermines the quest. I think this view makes it easier to deal with questions concerning mind and consciousness. Treating consciousness as an object places us immediately into a seemingly inevitable quest to try to explain it (inevitable because of the domination of science, which feels it needs to explain all ‘objects’). How are these ‘objects’ explained and how are they different from the consciousness ‘object’? It works better if all these things are seen as ‘process’ or ‘relation’ rather than ‘objects’, and then our need of an explanation can be a lot less fraught! For Sartre, there is no consciousness except consciousness that is engaged with the world.

But whilst some scientists try to ‘reduce’ consciousness to physical events in the brain, and therefore to ‘objects’, other scientists can be quoted as seeing things with a sense of wonder and speculating on consciousness as the true source of existence. Max Planck: ’I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative of consciousness.’ David Bohm: ‘A rudimentary consciousness is present, even at the level of particle physics.’ James Jeans: ‘The universe begins to look like a great thought than a great machine, that exists in the mind of some eternal spirit.’

The persistence of a belief that people are somehow separate from the objective world leads us from consciousness to more extreme notions of soul and spirit. For that ‘something beyond’ the everyday world of sense experience

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